An obituary to ERP in an AI world

ERP is gone – and for good. AI takes the centre stage now, opening a room full of opportunities to perform tasks and drive innovation, beyond automation

- Kiran Raju

Over the last few years, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) silently took its last few breaths. Some want to believe this is not true. The naysayers are adamant that autonomous systems are yet to overtake or replace traditional ERP – and they may not be entirely wrong, figuratively.

ERP continues to live in our hearts. After all, it continues to be a hurdle for IT leaders and businesses, irrespective of design, implementation, lifecycle management or value realisation. ERP, in its youth, failed miserably to solve the problems for which it was designed. But it was not ERP’s failure alone. Perhaps, we also failed to utilise its full potential. To add to ERP’s perplexity, advancements in business models meant more complex systems and processes that required data camaraderie, which just was not in its design. Furthermore, ERP implementations remain challenging, especially when an organisation’s goals and software quality do not match. In a nutshell, the marriage was not meant to be.